Beneath the Surface
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Helo and the Chief have a couple of issues they really need to work out...Spoilers for ep 2.09.


**Beneath the Surface**

Author: SabaceanBabe

Rating: PG-13

Word count: 2,231

Summary: Mr. Mustard, in the ballroom, with a wrench.

Spoilers: This fic is based on a spoiler photo from ep 2.09. If you're avoiding spoilers at all costs, please don't read this until after you've seen the ep. Of course, by that time, this fic will be totally AU, anyway, but still…

Author's note: Thank you to Un4scene and Repr0b8 for the beta. You two rock righteously.

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The third time had been one too many. Two times too many, really, but Helo had wanted to give Cally the benefit of the doubt, didn't want to believe that what he had thought at first were mistakes had been deliberate sabotage. But this last time… The last time could have killed Racetrack and him, not to mention caused severe damage to the landing deck, and he couldn't allow it to go on.

The first time something had gone wrong with his manual controls, it hadn't occurred to him to worry. He took the razzing from the deck crew about the sloppy landing in stride, had attributed it to his rusty piloting skills, but he had reported the sticky controls and asked that someone check it out. When he saw Cally's initials on the repair report, he expected that the repairs had been performed to her usual standards. But then it had happened again. The same controls had jammed at a critical point and he had asked Cally about it, not thinking at the time that it was anything other than a simple mistake. But in response to his question, he had gotten attitude and venom. The attitude he had come to expect in the time he'd been back, but the venom, especially from Cally, was new.

Helo had always liked Cally, thought of her, when he thought of her at all, as a sweet girl. Oh, he knew she had teeth, had seen her once on shore leave tear a guy a new one when he stepped out of line even as Helo had been about to do it for her, but it had shocked him to learn that she had killed Boomer. From what he'd been told, it hadn't happened in the heat of the moment or in self-defense, but in an act of cold-blooded calculation. She had illicitly obtained a firearm from the small-arms locker and had waited until Boomer was transferred from the brig to the newly built cage that was his Sharon's current "home," and she had shot her.

Somewhere along the line, the things that had happened to Cally – had happened to all of them – had broken something inside her and Helo wasn't convinced that it could be fixed.

Helo was confident of only one thing as he entered Tyrol's domain, and that was that he didn't want Cally anywhere near Sharon or his Raptor. There was nothing he could do to keep her from Sharon except trust the Marine guards to do their job, something that he wasn't happy about, given how well they had "protected" Boomer, but he _could_ do something to keep her away from the Raptor.

Spotting Tyrol on the other side of the hangar, Helo moved with purpose in that direction, sidestepping bits of equipment from various repairs in progress as he went. A pilot who was talking to one of the deck crew waved a greeting, but that was the only outward reaction to his presence. Activity continued to swirl around the hangar, men and women coming and going as he neared Tyrol and the Viper on which he worked.

Tyrol, wrench in hand, continued to tighten bolts on the Viper's landing struts, and Helo waited. Now that he was here, he was in no hurry to begin. He dreaded this conversation, not only because of the subject matter, but because he and the Chief hadn't exchanged more than a dozen words since Kobol. He expected it to be awkward all around.

After a handful of seconds, Tyrol glanced briefly toward Helo before returning to his work. "Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?"

Since there was really no decent way to soften his request, Helo dove right in. "I'd like someone other than Cally to work on my Raptor."

Jaw clenching then relaxing, Tyrol asked, "Any particular reason why?"

"This past week, she's signed off on three separate occasions that repairs to the manual controls have been completed, and yet they're sticking worse each time."

"Cally's one of my best, LT."

The man's tone was quite reasonable, almost too reasonable, as though he were humoring a chronic complainer; it was irritating. Tyrol still hadn't looked directly at him. Helo squashed the irritation, fearing that he was being oversensitive, perceiving insult where none was intended. "She may be one of your best, Chief, but I want someone else working on that Raptor."

"I'll talk to her." Tyrol straightened and walked around to the other side of the Viper, completely dismissing Helo.

He thought about the way the stick had only intermittently responded during that last landing, how he had barely been able to hold it together long enough to set his bird down in one piece after Cally had said she had fixed the problem. And Tyrol just walked away with a vague promise that he'd talk to her.

Helo felt his blood pressure rise. _Frak this_, he thought and followed the Chief. "You're not listening. I don't want her near my bird."

xxx

Tyrol knew full well what Helo was talking about, had, in fact, already reprimanded Cally for signing off on repairs that clearly hadn't been done, and had suspected Helo's hot landing earlier that shift had been a result of her negligence. It wasn't like Cally to be negligent, though; he hadn't exaggerated when he told the Lieutenant that she was one of his best.

But when Helo came charging around Poet's Viper, all Tyrol could think about was how lost Cally had seemed lately. He couldn't help but feel sorry for her, after all she'd been through on Kobol and since their return. She had got it into her fool head that she was protecting him when she had shot Sharon and this problem she had with Helo seemed to be an extension of that notion. Cally had only just been released from the brig and if it went on her record that she had deliberately disregarded her job in order to make Helo look bad, then she would go right back in.

"If I take her off your Raptor, I have to cite the reason and it goes on her permanent record."

"Then it'll just have to go on her permanent record, Chief. Something has to be done before she… hurts someone."

Tyrol heard sarcasm in Helo's tone. Torn between sorrow at a Cylon's death and guilt at his relief that Cally hadn't received a more serious sentence for causing that death, the sarcasm burned. "I think that's a little harsh, LT, don't you?"

"Harsh? No, I don't think that's _harsh_. Harsh would be taking out half the landing deck the next time I fly, _after_ she's supposedly repaired those controls."

Staring at a long tear in the surface of the Viper's metal skin, Tyrol's fist tightened on the wrench he still held. _I'll have to get Jammer to patch that_, he thought. Cally's laugh drifted to his ears and he realized she must not have seen Helo enter the hangar.

"Is there some problem between you and Cally, sir?" Tyrol felt odd, disconnected from his surroundings. His voice sounded strange, like it came from someone else. "Because Cally doesn't have a vindictive bone in her body, sir." Cally's face appeared in his mind's eye, contorted with rage and unreasoning hatred, and he thought for a second that he caught a whiff of cordite, but the hangar was nowhere near the firing range. He saw again the barrel of a handgun pointed at Sharon. _His_ Sharon, not the one Helo had brought with him.

But Cally's attack had been just an isolated incident, hadn't it?

xxx

The conversation was so much worse than Helo had expected, spiraling rapidly out of his control. As so many things seemed to since his return. "Not vindictive?" He was getting more than a little sick of all the bullshit – the looks, the comments and snide remarks he'd had to put with – and couldn't stop himself from baiting Tyrol. "Seems to me Cally _murdered_ Boomer."

Tyrol stiffened and turned. For the first time, he made eye contact with Helo. "Boomer was a Cylon, sir. A Cylon who tried to _murder_ the Old Man." The Chief's tone was condescending, as though he spoke to a not-too-bright child; both his words and tone echoed things Kat had said during a recent card game.

Helo knew he should just walk away, even as he knew that he wouldn't. "She was someone we _all_ supposedly cared about, Chief."

"Sharon used us, Lieutenant. All of us. Not just me or you." Tyrol blinked hard a couple of times. "All of us, to further the Cylon… plan." There was pain and confusion in Tyrol's voice, mixed with anger.

Shaking his head, Helo just stared at Tyrol. "You never really knew her, did you?"

xxx

Stung by the accusation, Tyrol glared at Helo. "I knew her as well as I needed to, Lieutenant." Even when he and Sharon had been together, he had known Helo wanted her. And now the sorry bastard had her, or at least a version of her, while Tyrol had nothing but now-painful memories. "After I stopped thinking with my _dick_, I saw her clearly enough. At best, she was programmed to spy on us and at worst…" He wanted to hurt Helo as he himself hurt. "At worst, she was an attempted murderer. That _thing_ you brought back is no different."

xxx

Helo felt his blood boil. His hands clenched into fists and he wondered how things had gotten so personal so fast. Even though what he really wanted was to smash his fists into Tyrol's face, a small voice from his long-ago officers' training held him to sharp words. "Maybe she would have been able to fight her 'programming,' if you hadn't abandoned her." Helo shook his head in disgust at both himself and the Chief. "Get someone else assigned to my Raptor."

He turned to leave.

xxx

Tyrol saw red when Helo turned his back on him. Without conscious thought, he took a firm grip on the wrench in his right hand and he lifted it, swinging it hard at the Lieutenant's head. He might have heard someone shout "Helo, look out!" and then was sure that he had when the wrench connected solidly with the taller man's shoulder, instead of his head.

The disjointed feeling stayed with Tyrol. There were voices shouting, but all he was truly aware of was the Raptor pilot's grunt as he hit the deck and rolled to his back, an arm coming up to block the wrench as it came down again.

Someone tried to pull him off Helo and he snarled, a low, animal sound from the back of his throat and the depths of his soul. One of Helo's arms was tangled in thick black tubing, but the man still somehow managed to shove Tyrol off. Regaining his feet, raising the wrench for another blow, his aim was deflected when Helo swung the length of ribbed plastic at Tyrol's head, clipping him in the eye.

Suddenly, the makeshift weapon was torn from Tyrol's grasp and he was pinned on his back by something solid and heavy. As the tool clattered across the decking, he felt rough hands grip both sides of his head. His skull hit the deck once, twice, and then, with a roar, he sent Helo flying, barely breaking away before the other man grasped his ankle and pulled.

Tyrol had no idea how long he and Helo fought, but there came a time when he lay on his back, the bright overhead lights spearing into his right eye since the left was swollen shut, lungs pumping like a bellows, but only so far before sharp pain made him exhale again. Tyrol thought he might have at least one broken rib. The harsh breathing next to him told him that Helo wasn't in much better shape.

"What the hell is going on in here?"

xxx

Helo had become aware of an expanding zone of silence just before Colonel Tigh's voice broke through the remaining voices of their audience. All sound ceased when Tigh stepped into view. Helo held his breath and knew that Tyrol did the same. Closing his eyes for a moment, he resisted the urge to roll over and vomit on Tigh's shoes. He rolled his head to the side, ignoring, for the moment, the sight of Racetrack at the edge of the crowd – _someone must have called her_ – and looked at the Chief who stared at the ceiling. Painfully, Helo maneuvered his weight onto his elbows and met the Colonel's eyes. "I guess I haven't been around tools in a while, sir."

Tigh's eyes narrowed. "Tools." Then he looked at Tyrol. "Anything you want to add to that, Chief?"

"I guess the Lieutenant's a little clumsy, Colonel."

There was another dead silence as the deck crew and the two combatants held their collective breath. "Don't let it happen again."

The Colonel's heels beat a sharp tattoo against the deck as he walked away. Helo watched him go, wondering if maybe he had made a mistake as he listened to Tyrol get to his feet next to him.

After a second or two of thick silence, Helo's eyes met the Chief's. Without a word, he accepted the hand that Tyrol extended in a silent offer of truce.


End file.
